japonisme

03 July 2009

nightsoil

JAPAN

It was a miniature country onceTo my imagination;Home of the Short,And also the academy of stuntsWhere acrobats are taughtThe famous secrets of the trade:To cycle in the big paradeWhile spinning plates upon their parasols,Or somersaults that do not touch the ground,Or tossing seven ballsIn Most Celestial Order round and round.

A child's quick sense of the ingenious stampedAll their invention:toys I used to getAt Christmastime,or the peculiar, crampedLook of their alphabet.Fragile and easily destroyed,Those little boats of celluloidDriven by camphor around the bathroom sink,And delicate the folded paper prizeWhich, dropped into a drinkOf water, grew up right before your eyes.

Now when we reached them it was with a senseSharpened for treachery compounding in their brainsLike mating weasels;our IntelligenceSaid: The Black Dragon reignsSecretly under yellow skin,Deeper than dyes of atabrineAnd deadlier. The War Department said:Remember you are Americans; forsakeThe wounded and the deadAt your own cost; remember Pearl and Wake.

And yet they bowed us inwith ceremony,Told us what brands of Sakewere the best,Explained their agriculturein a phonyDialect of the West,Meant vaguely to be understoodAs a shy sign of brotherhoodIn the old human bondage to the factsOf day-to-day existence. And like ants,Signaling tiny pactsWith their antennae, they would wave their hands.

At last we came to see them not as glibWalkers of tightropes, worshipers of carp,Nor yet a species out of Adam's ribMeant to preserve its warpIn Cain's own image. They had learnedThat their tough eye-born goddess burnedAdoring fingers. They were very poor.The holy mountain was not moved to speak.Wind at the paper doorOffered them snow out of its hollow peak.

Human endeavor clumsily betraysHumanity. Their excrement served in this;For, planting rice in water, they would raiseSchistosomiasisJaponica, that enters throughThe pores into the avenueAnd orbit of the blood, where it may foilThe heart and kill, or settle in the brain.This fruit of their nightsoilThrives in the skull, where it is called insane.

Now the quaint earlyimage of JapanThat was so charmingto me as a childSeems like a brightdesign upon a fan,Of water rushing wildOn rocks that can be folded up,A river which the wrist can stopWith a neat flip, revealing merely sticksAnd silk of what had been a fan before,And like such winning tricks,It shall be buried in excelsior.

(On leaving Germany, he spent some time in Japan, generating news copy to portray the occupying American forces in a favorable manner. “It was quite shameless, hypocritical work,” he said, “and therefore perfectly consistent with everything I had ever known about the Army.” )1

Is it a dragonfly or a maple leafThat settles softly down upon the water?

one western artist was known to take most deeply to heart the teachings of the japanese. his name was lucien gaillard. as was written about him during his lifetime, "Lucien Gaillard is ever on the look-out for that which is fresh and novel. As gold-worker and jeweller he has been fore- most among the most resolute supporters of the modern decorative art.

At first the jewels he produced were somewhat complicated and distorted, but now he has attained to greater wisdom and greater simplicity, this evolution being the result of serious and patient study of the Japanese masters.

He has been at great pains also to recover the secret of the marvellous oxidations on the bronzes of the Far East, and he has succeeded therein. He has lately shown some hair-pins and small-combs thoroughly characteristic of his present manner." 3

in her book on gems and jewelry, marilena mosco says, "Lucien Gaillard, who exhibited for the first time in 1902, was the most "Japanese" of the Parisian jewelers.

"Monsieur Lucien Gaillard has always been seduced by the art of the Japanese and is highly interested in the mystery of their work. One of his merits is the instantaneous legibility: clear, sharp and the pureness, of his designs.

Copying faithfully the shapes and lines of Nature, synthesizing them but not falsifying them, he achieves in his creations a sober simplicity." 4